


Same City, Different Day

by Her_Madjesty



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: F/F, Fem!Dmitry, Humor, Inconvenient Crushes, Sexual Tension, Thievery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13695804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: Dmitry has Petersburg mapped onto her palms.





	Same City, Different Day

Dmitry has Petersburg mapped onto her palms. Not Leningrad - Petersburg, with all of her corners and dirt and ice gleaming in the morning light as it bounces off of the Neva. Where the less devote turn down one of the city’s alleys, see the ripping posters of Lenin, and duck their heads, Dmitry presses further in, tracing brick with broken fingernails until the posters dull and smoke leaks out of gaps between rotten teeth. She exchanges cans of beans for half a loaf of bread in a market that the Bolsheviks don’t monitor. Here, there is limited pigeon, freshly caught; burnt down candles and a book of matches; bundles of wires claimed to have been stolen from a hijacked telephone in the Bolshevik offices. There are girls who look no older than Dmitry who have steeled themselves from shivering. They stand at the edge of corners, blood on their mouths and smoke in their throats; when Dmitry passes, they scoff between their simpering.

Still, they accept her exchanges of moth bitten mittens and pseudo-Romanov scarves and offer snippets of information, in return.

“The new guard by the Neva is a hard sell,” one of them – Viola – says with a sigh, wiggling a finger through a minuscule hole in the shirt Dmitry offers her. “I’ve been watching him for days.”

“His colleagues aren’t so bad,” says another – Riina, wrapping her new scarf around her frost-bitten throat. “They’re chasing rumors of the Romanovs, though; too busy for the likes of us.”

“The Romanovs?” Dmitry doesn’t quite scoff. She runs a hand through her ragged hair and grimaces as she catches in a tangle. One of the girls takes pity on her, and together they undo the knot.

“Rumor has it that one of the princesses is still alive.” Giggling, Riina moves her scarf from her throat to her head, batting her eyelashes at a cluster of men passing by. “The dowager empress has put out a reward for any information concerning her little Anastasia.”

One of the men slows his gait, and Riina sways closer to him. Dmitry watches her, torn between admiration and irritation.

“You got anything else?” she asks. Riina ignores her, but Viola sighs.

“You couldn’t pass for her, litte Dima,” she tells Dmitry, pulling her fingers from the other girl’s hair.

Dmitry doesn’t allow herself to mourn the touch and grimaces, instead. Her father's name sound strange on the other girl's tongue, but Dmitry's had years to adapt to the curve of strangers' tongues on the name she's borrowed. Better to keep it in circulation than to pollute the waters with her own. “I’ve seen the paintings,” she grumbles. “Wasn’t even thinking about it.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Viola agrees. She presses a tentative kiss to Dmitry’s cheek while her gaze wanders, fixing on another of the party lingering at Riina’s side.

Dmitry rolls her eyes and pushes the girl away. Viola giggles, a false, high thing; her wave, as Dmitry leaves her behind, is more dismissive than sincere.

She turns one corner, then another, until the alley begins to widen. Dmitry watches her breath flow out in front of her in a white fog as she steps onto one of Petersburg’s major streets. Remnants of cars driven by Imperial hangers-on litter the area, and, as she walks, a truck bearing a cluster of Bolshevik shoulders barrels past, their journey punctuated by their broad, red flag.

Dmitry slows her pace until the truck is out of view and ignores the uneasy pang of sadness in her chest. Petersburg seems bleaker, despite the bloody punch that seems to have saturated it.

A warm body thumps against her back. Dmitry whirls, hands rising in one part surrender, one part fist. She freezes when, instead of an alley rat or Bolshevik lackey, a young woman blinks up at her, blue eyes wide and guileless.

“I’m so sorry!” the girl blusters, immediately dropping her eyes to the street.

Dmitry stares.

“I’ll -” the girl stutters, “I’ll just be going.”

Dmitry opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. The slip of a girl sneaks around her, the shape of her buried beneath a torn coat, a threadbare scarf, and a hat meant for a gentleman twice her size.

 _Say something_ , Dmitry begs herself, watching a flash of auburn hair dance in the wind. _What’s the matter with you?!_

In her desperate fight with an abruptly lax brain, Dmitry’s hands fall to her sides. It is the absence there that startles her out of her daze.

She glances down. She has no wallet to carry, but her remaining can of beans – the only food she has – is gone.

“Hey!”

The last of the thief’s auburn hair disappears around the corner.

Dmitry swears and gives chase.

Rounding the corner, she sees the urchin start to run, her blue eyes flashing every time she glances behind her. Dmitry’s long legs propel her over small piles of snow and around the minimal crowd walking on the sidewalk. The thief uses the alleys to her advantage, though; for the disadvantage of her diminutive size, she uses it to appear and disappear, seemingly at will.

But Dmitry has Petersburg burnt into the palms of her hands. She breaks off from the thief as she barrels down a long alley, turning on her heel and sprinting in the opposite direction. A minute of breathless running lead her to the alley’s only mouth.

She makes it in time to open her arms and embrace the fleeing girl, whose eyes are still fixed on the darkness behind her.

They tumble into the street, limbs interlocking even as the thief kicks and scratches in order to get away. Dmitry brings her arms around the other girl’s middle and hauls her onto the sidewalk in time for another Bolshevik patrol to drive past. In the smoke they leave behind, the thief stills.

Arms still around her, Dmitry realizes that the girl is shaking.

“Should’ve picked a better target, comrade,” she growls, all the same. A quick fleece of the girl’s pockets reveals her can of beans along with a book of matches, a crust of rye, and lint.

Dmitry raises an eyebrow and leaves the rye behind. The thief shakes herself from her grip, at last, and directs her glower upward.

Dmitry, a fair six inches taller than her, smirks. “If you’d been nicer about it,” she says, “I would’ve said we could share.”

“How Bolshevik of you,” the thief sneers.

Dmitry rolls her eyes. “Run along, now,” she says, shooing the girl down the street. “Find someone else’s pockets to pick, or go rummage through the garbage.”

The thief’s scowl deepens. Dmitry waits, but she does not turn away.

The staring contest draws the attention of a man across the street dressed in the remains of an Imperial robe. Dmitry eyes him, then grabs the girl’s arm and drags her back into the nearby alley.

“Look,” Dmitry mutters, “I’m not going to feed you just because you bat your pretty eyes at me. You want to try that, go to Theatre Street; you’ll have better luck there.”

The thief pulls her arm from Dmitry’s grip. “I don’t need advice on how to survive from you,” she spits.

Dmitry stills as something cold and metal presses against her ribs. She glances down and sees the thief’s sturdy shiv threatening the thin layer of her coat.

“дерьмо́.”

The thief smiles. Dmitry blinks, stunned.

“Give me the beans,” the thief says, careful to keep her voice low.

“Who are you?” Dmitry demands. Slowly, she moves a hand towards her pocket.

“It doesn’t matter,” the thief mutters, rolling her eyes. She keeps her gaze on Dmitry’s pocket, though she continues to glance towards the alley’s mouth.

Dmitry’s lips thin. She pulls the beans from her pocket and moves, ready to exchange them for relief from the point of a stranger’s shiv.

On the street, a truck backfires. The thief flinches, then cowers; Dmitry shoves the can of beans back into her pocket and falls, too, one arm raised to protect her face as she places herself between the street and the stranger.

Two Bolshevik officers appear at the mouth of the alley. Dmitry reaches for the stranger’s arm and composes her face into a quick smile.

“What are you doing back here?” one of the officer demands.

Dmitry closes her eyes and tries not to groan. “Nothing to worry about, comrade,” she says, forcing herself upright. After a moment’s hesitation, she hauls her would-be thief up after her. “My sister and I got a little lost looking for our uncle.”

The girl’s brow creases, as though she wants to glare, but self preservation seems to keep her from forcing Dmitry’s arm away from her shoulders.

The officers exchange glances. “And who is your uncle?” the first speaker asks.

“Asimov,” Dmitry supplies. “Rasputin Asimov. I am Elizaveta, and my sister -”

“Anya,” the girl supplies. Once cowed, Dmitry watches her school herself into something meek. It’s a disguise that would work well on anyone who couldn’t see the hatred burning in her eyes.

The second of the officers steps forward. “Then let us escort you two ladies to somewhere more seemly,” he says, glancing between the two of them. The stranger’s auburn hair looks almost blonde in contrast with Dmitry’s darker hue; Dmitry continues to stare and tucks a thousand curses behind her teeth. “This sort of environment is not for good comrades such as yourselves.”

Dmitry does her best not to sigh. She keeps her arm around Anya’s shoulder as they’re guided from the alley and towards a familiar truck, its bright red flag snapping in the Petersburg wind.

Anya – or whatever her name is – presses her cheek to Dmitry’s coat lapel as they walk towards the car. Dmitry dismisses the abrupt thundering of her heart as irritation – or maybe she’s run out of adrenaline. Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

“If we don’t get out of this,” Anya breathes, voice muffled by fabric and rage, “I am going to stick my shiv through your ribs and let you bleed out on the street.”

“дерьмо́v, Anya,” Dmitry murmurs back. She has the first inklings of a plan brewing in her brain, even as the officers guide her into the back of their truck. “You sure know how to make an impression.”

The girl’s warmth seeps through Dmitry’s thin coat and leaves her breathless. She steels the thing fluttering in her stomach and huffs out a noise that sounds almost like a laugh.

(Dmitry does not flush. She doesn’t.)

“Good,” Anya mutters. She accepts the hand one of the Bolshevik officers offers her and settles herself against the cool metal bench haphazardly nailed to the metal bed. “Then we’ll be alright, won’t we, sister?”

It is nearly impossible not to roll her eyes and groan, but somehow, Dmitry manages.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
